Which Mission: Impossible is it?

With Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opening in South Africa this weekend, fans will have certain expectations as we clutch our tickets in our sweaty hands. 

Firstly, we want to see the scenes that the Mission: Impossible team shot on location in South Africa, including at the Kruger National Park, Port Edward, the Blyde River Canyon, Waterfall Bluff on the Wild Coast, and the Drakensberg Mountains. 

And, more importantly, we want a stunt that makes us go, “They don’t even try to insure Tom Cruise these days, right?”. It’s a Mission: Impossible tradition, at this point, to do anything from hurling him off the world’s tallest building, to having him crash two helicopters together, or jump a motorbike off a cliff so he can parachute onto a train. That’s what puts the “Impossible” in the mission. 

With that in mind, we binged all seven previous Mission: Impossible movies on Showmax to remind ourselves which iconic moment goes with which film. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to gather your friends and supplies, load them up and watch until you get to the part that makes someone go, “Oh, this is the one where…”

1. Mission: Impossible

The plot: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) goes on the run as he tries to find out who framed him when he is accused of murdering his Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team during a mission in Prague, and of selling government secrets to a mysterious arms dealer.

It’s the one where… Ethan whizzes down from the ceiling of the most secure computer vault at the CIA headquarters in Langley, while suspended in a cable harness. He has to dangle over a pressure-sensitive floor that’s so finely calibrated that he can’t even allow a drop of sweat to fall on it, and he can’t make a sound without triggering the alarm. Every second of silence ratchets the tension higher, and oh, the (actual) suspense when Ethan has to engage his full core strength to splay his body like a frog after the cable slips, yoinking him to a halt just centimeters off the floor.

Fun fact: This stunt led to Tom smacking his face into the floor several times before he got his balance right. But director Brian De Palma and his team designed such an iconic set piece that it has been referenced everywhere from Shrek 2 to The Simpsons and South Park.

2. Mission: Impossible 2

The plot: Ethan Hunt goes undercover with professional thief Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandiwe Newton) to stop rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) from stealing and unleashing a deadly virus so that he can cash in on selling the antidote to the highest bidder.

It’s the one where… director John Woo opens the film with Ethan Hunt free solo rock climbing at Dead Horse Point in Utah. He has no ropes, no cables, and there’s no hiding that we’re seeing expensive-to-insure actor Tom Cruise doing the climb, and flinging himself across space to land on a nearby ledge, only for his feet to slip on loose grit, sending him sliding down the ledge and over the edge until he saves himself with a one-handed, white-knuckle grip. Then he swings about by that hand until his back faces the rock in an Iron Cross position, allowing him to shift his weight to his other hand, then swing over to a more climbable ledge. 

Fun fact: While Tom’s safety cables were removed in post-production, he was still the one climbing and hanging on for dear life while tearing a shoulder muscle. And when he was jumping across to the edge, he was doing that with a foot injury he hadn’t mentioned.

3. Mission: Impossible III

The plot: Ethan must keep his IMF job in a secret from his new fiancée, Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan) as he assembles a team to take on Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a secretive arms and information broker who’s placed an object known as "The Rabbit's Foot" on the market.

It’s the one where… the IMF team need an inside man to sneak into the Vatican. Ethan has to “run” up the outer wall of the Vatican using a grappling line so he can meddle with the security cameras on top (the way he does it suggests that he eats crunches for breakfast). He caps it off with a sassy little quip: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” before repeating his Mission: Impossible cable drop on the other side of the wall and slipping into disguise as a priest.

Fun fact: The wall-running scene was real, the Vatican was not, as director JJ Abrams and the MI team did not have permission to film in the Holy City. Instead they created a 12m high model wall for Tom to run up. It would be the most unusual Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt running scene, but…

4. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

The plot: When the IMF is framed for bombing the Kremlin heritage site in Moscow while Ethan is investigating an individual known only as "Cobalt" (Michael Myqvist), Ethan and three other agents are the only ones left to stop Cobalt’s plot to spark a global nuclear war.

It’s the one where… Ethan/Tom scales the outside of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, to reach the 130th floor. Suction glove technology lets him down, an approaching sandstorm is whipping up gusts as it closes on Dubai, and on the downward climb, Ethan runs out of cable as he’s abseiling/running down the vertical side of the building, so he has to run across the building horizontally to build up enough momentum in a Tarzan-style swing so he can unhook his harness and fling himself down towards the window below where his team is waiting. 

Fun fact: Director Brad Bird’s team had to get special permission to drill strategic anchor points into the building for Tom’s safety cables. And since the Burj Khalifa heats up under the sun, Tom practised the stunt by climbing an adjustable, heated glass wall in the studio.

5. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

The plot: With the IMF facing calls to disband, Ethan Hunt gathers a team to prove the existence of a shady group named the Syndicate who’s been threatening him, and they set out to bring down the Syndicate by any means necessary.  

It’s the one where… we’re at the Vienna State Opera for a performance of Puccini’s Turandot, but three assassins have forgotten their manners! During Nessun Dorma, Ethan scampers about on the flies above the stage to get his hands on a sniper rifle disguised as a bass flute. The best part of the scene, aside from the drama of the opera and the stage lighting, is seeing Ethan read the sheet music over the conductor’s shoulder, only to spot that someone has circled the note above the “rò” of “Vincerò”. With that, he realises that the note shift will be the assassins’ signal to take their shot. He then ”jumps the gun” and wings the target before the assassins can, allowing the security team to hustle him out of the way. Oh, and we have assassin Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Furgusson) leaping onto the side stage curtains while wearing a spectacular floor-length yellow gown.

Fun fact: Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie was struggling to come up with the perfect opening scene until a trip to the ballet in Paris with his wife inspired him to set an action sequence inside a grand theatre.

6. Mission: Impossible – Fallout

The plot: The Apostles, a terrorist group formed by former agents of the Syndicate, threatens the world following a botched IMF mission to recover plutonium. But when Ethan sets out to recover the plutonium himself, the CIA suspects him of having sinister motives and compromised loyalties.

It’s the one where… Ethan climbs up a rope to board an Airbus BK17 helicopter in mid-flight, fist-fights his way to hijacking it in mid-air, then takes a “crash course” in flying it.  He uses the helicopter to chase down another helicopter flown by August Walker (Henry Cavill), performing all sorts of butt-clenching aerial acrobatics (filmed on cameras that put us right in the cockpit with Ethan/Tom) in front of a waterfall, all while under fire by August. Then Ethan crashes their helicopters together, and the two fight on the ledge of a mountain in New Zealand. Aaand, scene!

Fun fact: Tom Cruise took just 12 days to earn his helicopter license, then spent 18 months training to perform this stunt sequence. Returning director Christopher McQuarrie followed Tom’s helicopter in his own (off-screen) helicopter so he could radio through directions and keep Tom from flying out of shot. 

7. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

The plot: An AI system called the Entity goes rogue, sinking an advanced new Russian submarine, and taking over cyberspace. The only way to stop the Entity is by disarming it with the key, and Ethan and the IMF are in a secret race with the world’s superpowers and shadow organisations to be the first to find it. 

It’s the one where…  after giving Benji (Simon Pegg) hell for asking him to parachute onto a moving train, Ethan drives his motorbike off a steep, jutting cliff to give himself enough height and momentum to make the jump safely. But that’s just the setup. He then fights assassin Gabriel Martinelli (Esai Morales) on top of said moving train, ducking when it passes under overhead trusses. And when the bridge ahead of them is blown up, Ethan decouples the carriages from the locomotive, leaving himself and his new ally, Grace (Hayley Atwell), on a carriage that’s teetering in the air. The two have to run from the roof of one falling carriage to the next, then make their way through that carriage, which is the train’s kitchen, full of burning, sharp, slippery and dangerous obstacles (including a fryer full of boiling oil and a newly detached gas line), as it, too, starts to go over the edge. As each carriage slowly tilts and falls, they face more and more absurd obstacles, including a piano. It’s Looney Tunes!

Fun fact: Back again, director Christopher McQuarrie had to have a functioning replica of a Britannia Class steam train and its passenger carriages specially built for this sequence so that the MI team could film on and in it, and destroy it by propelling it off a “cliff” into a disused quarry.

It’s just another day at the office for Ethan Hunt and the IMF team, but for us civilians, the adrenaline of watching Mission: Impossible is enough to lay us flat on the couch! Happy watching. 

Catch the Mission: Impossible collection now on Showmax.